GSA Members in the News

2015

July

GSA Fellow Richard C. Berg has been appointed director of the Illinois State Geological Survey and the 13th Illinois State Geologist. Berg has served as interim director since May 2014 and was previously chief scientist. He has led numerous multidisciplinary groups at the ISGS during his 40-year career and has made significant contributions to the discipline through his leadership in GSA.
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GSA Fellow Marcia K. McNutt, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals and former USGS director, has been elected president of the National Academy of Sciences. She will begin her term in July 2016.
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June

GSA Senior Fellow Syed E. Hasan, geosciences professor emeritus at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, has been awarded a Fulbright award to Qatar by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FFSB). Hasan will teach courses in waste management and environmental geology at Qatar University, and offer seminars at other Middle East universities, during the 2016 spring semester.
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2014

November

The Association of American State Geologists (AASG) has recognized GSA Fellow P. Patrick Leahy with its prestigious Pick and Gavel Award. This award was initiated by AASG in 1999 to recognize distinguished friends of geology who have made major contributions to advancing or facilitating the role that geoscience plays in our society.
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GSA Fellow Patricia H. Kelley of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, has been selected to receive one of four U.S. Professors of the Year awards. Sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and administered by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the awards recognize professors for their excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring.
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October

GSA member Lura E. Joseph of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been awarded the Geoscience Information Society's Mary B. Ansari Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes significant contributions to the field of geoscience information.

GSA Fellow Sean C. Solomon has been awarded the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest honor for achievement and leadership in advancing science. Solomon will receive his medal at a White House ceremony with President Barack Obama later this year. Solomon is director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and principal investigator of NASA's mission to Mercury.
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September

GSA senior Fellow Farouk El-Baz has been named by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to an advisory council for national projects, including the creation of a channel that runs parallel to the Suez Canal and in the Egyptian government's efforts to improve Egyptian roads. Additionally, council members will help improve education in Egypt.
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GSA member and GeoCorpsTM America participant Ramia Bashara recently completed the final stages of a three-year-long project to develop a trail of EarthCaches for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) at the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, in Fort Benton, Montana. The official opening of these EarthCaches was covered by the local media.

GSA member Sarina Patel worked as an NPS–GSA Mosaics in Science program participant at Lava Beds National Monument during summer 2014, and was recently interviewed by the Herald and News (Klamath Falls, Oregon) about her work as a Science Communications Assistant.

August

The work of GSA members and National Park Service paleontology interns Benjamin Otoo and Nicole Ridgwell is featured in a National Park Service blog post "Our Office is a Dinosaur Quarry."

May

GSA Fellow W. Crawford Elliott of Georgia State University in Atlanta has been elected President of the Clay Minerals Society (CMS) and began his term at the 51st meeting of CMS on 17 May 2014.

April

GSA Senior Fellow Kevin C.A. Burke of the University of Houston has received the 2014 Arthur Holmes Medal & Honorary Membership Award of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) for exceptional international standing and achievements in solid earth geosciences.

GSA Fellow Steven Driese of Baylor University has been awarded honorary membership in SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology) for excellence in professional achievements and service.

GSA member Samantha Hansen of the University of Alabama has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for “innovative research that will provide critical constraints on the geodynamic evolution of the Antarctic continent as well as information to better constrain evolution of the Antarctic ice sheets, and for developing novel approaches to introduce underrepresented students to the geosciences.”

GSA Senior Fellow George Devries Klein has retired from petroleum geological consulting and has relocated to Barragada, Guam.

GSA Senior Fellow Vince Matthews, Colorado’s State Geologist, has been awarded the 2014 Pioneer Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). The award is given to longstanding members of the AAPG who have contributed to the association and who have made meaningful and significant contributions to the science of geology.

GSA Fellow Marli Miller of the University of Oregon answers questions about her writing and photography in a 17 April “Mary Anning's Revenge” blog post.

The work of GSA Fellow Terry Plank, Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is highlighted in a 14 Feb. Columbia University Earth Institute blog post.

GSA member Nathan Sheldon of the University of Michigan has received SEPM’s James Lee Wilson Award in recognition of excellence in sedimentary geology by an early career scientist.

March

February

The work of GSA Fellow Nora Noffke is featured in an 8 Feb. Science News article.

January

GSA Fellow Kerry Sieh has been named the Seismological Society of America’s Harry Fielding Reid medalist for his pioneering work and leadership. Sieh revolutionized the study of earthquakes by spearheading the development of the field of paleoseismology. The Harry Fielding Reid Medal for outstanding contributions in seismology and earthquake engineering and will be presented at the 2014 SSA annual meeting in April in Anchorage, Alaska, USA.
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Work by GSA members Andres Aslan,Rebecca Flowers, and Wayne Ranney, and GSA Fellows Rebecca Dorsey, Karl Karlstrom, and Kelin Whipple was highlighted in Science News on 25 Jan. 2014 in a hardcopy article titled "The storied Colorado: Tracing the history of the river that carved the West," (p. 22–26) and in an online article, “The long and winding Colorado.”